


Smoke in a Bottle

by paisleySage



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Angst, Humanstuck, John is the worst best friend ever, M/M, Multiple Daves, PTSD Dave
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paisleySage/pseuds/paisleySage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the boss battle that ensues when the kids and trolls reach the new session, Dave gets thrown into an alternate universe where sburb never happened. He slowly realizes he's stuck there with no way to return. But hey, at least Bro's alive. And Karkat is sort of adorable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This is not Kansas

**Author's Note:**

> Hey look it's my first homestuck fanfic and it's probably really rough. But hey, look on the bright side: if I stick with it, it can only get better! Right? I sure as hell hope so.
> 
> Okay so what we've got here is davekat on a slow buildup front and center with some brojohn, rosemary, and daverezi serving as the drama-filled backdrop. Characters will be added to the tags as they show up. If I manage to scrounge up the courage we may even have a sex scene or five. We'll see.

See, the funny thing about this whole nightmare is that it started off going really, _really_ well.

Not too well, obviously. That would’ve been suspicious, probably. No, for starters Dave got his sword arm slashed about to the bone. It was a lucky shot, he’d say years later about the scar, but the fact of it was he’d jumped right in between Bec Noir and John and—well, if Noir could run Bro through with his own sword, what could he do to Dave? Let’s not pretend those three years on that meteor were spent strifing. Nobody on that freaking rock matched his skill with a blade, and there were only so many times he could spar with Karkat before the big-mouthed troll got sick of his longer-ranged weapon.

Sure, the universe was sort of falling apart. Just a little. Lord English was shattering reality out of spite or maybe just for funsies, who the fuck knew, but it wasn’t until the cracks started getting big enough that the objects they touched _disappeared out of reality_ that shit really started getting messy.

Jake and Rose had gone back to back, guns and needles plugging holes and zapping the fuck out of everything that got close. Rose even got a few hits on Noir, but the sun-powered fucker barely batted an eyelash. Karkat managed to hack off one of his ears with a sickle, bless his little mutant head. Jade was off somewhere dealing with the Batterwitch with Roxy, Dirk, and Davesprite, which left Jane and Jake with the rest of the stuck-on-the-meteor club and John.

Fucking John.

In the end, it turned out that the kid just wasn’t stupid _enough._ The four of them had sort of trusted his blind idiocy to get them through the worst of it, and once they’d all met up again, shit hadn’t really changed. How could it. He was still idealistic and optimistic as ever. But like the rest of them, he’d gotten wise.

They’d never meant to beat Noir. He was the unbeatable boss. No, they figured they’d trap the bastard. It was a complicated plan all Kanaya’s design (okay maybe Rose helped but frankly he was scared to consider which parts his inebriated sister had been allowed to contribute) but in the end it’d fucking _worked._ They stood victorious, the gods of the new universe, come to kick ass and veni vidi vici the _shit_ out of everything dumb enough to step up and make trouble.

Until Lord English decided to make a fucking black hole in the center of Skaia. It jarred him a bit to see that Rose and Kanaya were the only ones not surprised by this, like hell guys what other what-if scenarios had they decided not to share, but without Jade’s powers they were shit outa luck trying to pop off to Prospit. Things got a little hairy then, Dave had to say.

Actually, no, fuck this. Fuck remembering everything. Remembering hurt. He just. He needed to calm down and figure out what was happening _now._ Right this minute. Because right this minute he was in a crater on what looked like planet Earth. There were houses. Hey, lookit that, he’d touched down right in somebody’s back yard. How the holy honking hell did that happen.

He tried to stand. Shit wasn’t happening. He’d lost a lot of blood, apparently, but frankly it was hard to tell what with the red pajamas and all. He was having trouble feeling his hurt arm. Nope, yeah, even the pain was fading into numbness. That couldn’t be good. His eyesight flickered. He saw stars. He saw the door to the house opening and a very familiar man poking his head out. Now who could that be.

Dave stayed where he was, all cozy in his little crater. He couldn’t wait to hear the mock pickup lines. Did it hurt when you fell from heaven? Actually now that he thought about it, he didn’t really remember touching down at all. Or falling. Weird.

Hey look, that familiar but so far nameless guy has friends. And they’re all shorter than him. Except that last guy, the one with the pointy anime shades who looks a lot like Bro. An _awful_ lot like bro. He’s even got the hat, something Dirk sure as hell never wore. But of course it couldn’t be, since he’d never seen Bro even in dream bubbles. Ever. Never ever ever.

The mysterious Bro impersonator snapped his fingers in front of Dave’s face. “Yo. Can you hear me?”

Dave blinked. “Sorry, were you saying something? I appear to be leaking some important bodily fluids and was a little fucking distracted.”

“Oh my god, it _is_ Dave,” someone behind the mysterious Bro impersonator gasped. Sounded suspiciously like an Egbert.

“Yeah but what the fuck am I _wearing.”_ Oh no. That sounded like _him_.

“We need to get him in the house. If the injury is bad enough I’ll have to take him to the hospital. Mister Strider, will you fetch me the first aid kit?” That was the familiar dude whose name was still completely slipping his mind. He grasped Dave by his good arm and hauled him to his feet. “Can you walk?”

“Sure. In some universes I can even fly.” If there’s ever been a time and a place for not being a smartass, Dave had never found it. “Think I hit my head though. My inner anti-gravity chamber seems to be malfunctioning.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“Dave.”

“I see.”

He sat Dave down at the kitchen table. The mysterious Bro impersonator had the first aid kit out and open. As soon as the two men were confident that Dave wouldn’t suddenly loll onto the floor, they were pulling his whole red upper ensemble up and over his head. Dave may have muttered something about minding his cape, but he’d lost a _lot_ of blood.

“Oh—oh my. That. That is _deep_. I’ll get the car—“

“Don’t bother, I know how to stitch.”

“Mister Strider, this is hardly—“

“Dave,” the mysterious Bro impersonator said. “You want to go to the hospital?”

The Dave in question kept his face impassive. No, this had to be a dream. Or a nightmare? He had to wake up. He had to get back to the fight. What was left of it. Before he got sucked into this. “Not particularly,” he said.

“You trust me to do up your stitches?”

Dave hesitated. There was some other question hanging off his words. He refused to ponder what it was. Not in this crazy funhouse. “Didn’t take you for a sewing man. You look more like a knitter.”

The mysterious Bro impersonator’s face did not change. A wave of nostalgia hit Dave full force, roaring in his ears over whatever the other man was saying. They stared at each other through their shades, and Dave found himself needing this to end.

“Sure, sew me up, bro.” That last word rolled off his tongue before he could stop it.

Bro’s face still didn’t change. But he grabbed the gauze and hydrogen peroxide and started cleaning Dave’s wound.

Dave still couldn’t feel a thing.

The men graciously saved any further questioning until Dave was fully clothed once more. They even provided a new shirt for him, since his pajama shirt with the cape and hood didn’t appear to be remaking itself. Or becoming any less bloody. Dave felt a little strange to be the only one in the room surprised by that.

The men kept the kids out of the kitchen. Which was sort of nice. On the one hand, he wasn’t sure he could deal with seeing any of his friends—the ones he was supposed to be fighting with in some other timeline—until he was ready to plunge into the dark corners of his recent memory and answer the big questions for them: how the fuck did he get here, and what happened to him. But he was the Knight of Time: if he had anything, it was time.

On the other hand though, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be alone with Bro, either. And that other guy. But that other guy, who finally introduced himself as John’s dad, wasn’t someone he felt a spectacular amount of guilt about. So forget not wanting to be around _him._

“So Dave.”

“Yeah Bro.”

“You look an awful lot like someone I know.”

“I can’t imagine who.”

“Mister Strider, you’re not suggesting what I _think_ you’re suggesting.”

“I think we should ask Dave here. So Dave.” Bro fixed Dave with his stare, the stare he used when he wanted something, usually answers. It wasn’t unlike his usual face, but the air around him changed somehow. Dave remembered. How could he forget?

Dadbert allowed the silence to stretch.

“I think I’m gonna go with ‘Hi, I’m alternate timeline Dave.’ Sound good to you? Or, I know, how about ‘Hi, I’m from a different version of your universe except Earth got destroyed and now me and my friends are trying a last-ditch effort to beat the game that pounded Earth into oblivion and maybe create a new universe.’ I think that last one has a nice ring to it.”

“An alternate timeline,” Bro repeated.

Dave sighed and ran his uninjured hand through his hair. “You guys got any apple juice?”

“I—yes, of course,” Dadbert said, going to the fridge.

Bro never took his eyes off Dave. “You’re going to have to elaborate.”

Some part of Dave had already accepted that this really, truly was Bro. Maybe not _his_ Bro, per se, but all the pieces were there. It was like sburb never happened. Or…hadn’t happened yet? Or had it already happened and this was them victorious? But if they _had_ beaten the game, wouldn’t they remember it? Any of them? “You ever hear of a game called sburb?”

“No.”

Dadbert set a glass of apple juice on the table. Dave took a few thirsty gulps while he tried to figure out how to sum up the last three years. “Well when I was thirteen, we played this game called sburb. John, Rose, Jade and me. And it destroyed the earth. We fought monsters and got powers and shit. We were sort of in the middle of a big fight just now. And I have no idea what happened or how I got here. Or even where ‘here’ is in the grand scheme of doomed timelines.” Maybe his timeline, which he’d always thought of as the alpha timeline, was actually a doomed one. Maybe the only timeline that wasn’t doomed was the one where they didn’t play the game.

Wouldn’t that just be hilarious.

“What are you going to do now?” Bro asked.

Dave shrugged. “No freaking clue.”

“Well in the meantime, um, _Dave._ You’re welcome to stay here.”

Dave looked up at Mr. Egbert. “Where is ‘here,’ exactly?”

“Suburb of Seattle, Washington.”

“And um. Do all of you live in this great big house together, or…?”

Dadbert laughed. “Sometimes!”

Dave blinked. “Okay what the fuck does that mean.”

“Language, please, David.”

Dave almost quirked a smile. Almost. He was proud of that one sliver of composure he still had left.

“John and I have lived here all his life. The Striders moved up to join us last year, and the Lalondes only just moved in down the street. Jade frequently visits and stays with the Lalondes, and there have been many sleepovers…”

Dave watched Dadbert scratch his head idly. “So you all just up and decided to move to Washington, is what you’re saying.” Well that wasn’t weird at all. “Why?”

John’s father rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I could never uproot, I’m attached to my job. But the way I understand it, Mister Strider’s work is through the internet and Mistress Lalonde had no trouble—“

“You did it for your kids. ‘Cause for some reason it seemed like a good idea to have us all together.”

“Why, yes.”

Bro was watching him. He pretended not to notice. Dadbert was also watching him, and though he didn’t remember much about John’s dad, he wasn’t really all that worried about him. Not like he was worried about Bro.

Wait no he wasn’t worried fuck that noise. Fuck that noise so hard it goes silent in a coma of orgasmic bliss, wakes up in the morning to find you _gone_ without even a dear john, calls you and finds that number has been disconnected.

“So…it’s cool if I just like. Hang out here with you guys indefinitely forever or until I figure out how to go back to my timeline?”

“Of course, David! Though I suppose you’d be asking Mister Strider then, wouldn’t you?”

“Well I mean—if that’s okay.” He looked at Bro. He wanted to pretend that he wasn’t going to be crushed if Bro wasn’t up for hosting two Daves (lookit all those negatives) but then decided that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he stuck out his lip to pout a little. Bro’d never been swayed by pouting but he wasn’t about to turn away an alternate timeline version of his bro in front of the posterboy of good parenting, was he?

“Sure.” Bro pat him on his injured arm. “You can have the crawlspace in the ceiling.” He started putting the first aid crap away and Dadbert asked to clarify that he was joking.

“Great. So. Uh. I’m gonna—“

“Go take a nap, I hope. You lost a lot of blood, and you need rest.” John’s dad took Dave’s good arm as he stood, and Dave shamefully realized he really did need the support. Shit. His vision went fuzzy for a few moments. When he could see again, he saw Bro watching him. He swallowed.

“Maybe a nap wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

They settled him down in the guest room. Dadbert left first, leaving Dave alone with Bro. Bro put his thumbs through the belt loops in his pants and stared down at Dave expectantly.

The part of Dave that had been riding on a wave of denial lost control of the surfboard and got caught in the undertow of inescapable truth. The memory of his brother’s body run through on the ground bubbled up in his throat and he cracked. “Okay so I know this is the most uncool thing ever and you can feel free to disown me for this but—“

Bro sat down on the bed and pulled Dave up into a hug.

Dave may have a thing about hugs. And by thing we’re talking like an entire catalogue of each subtle difference in the way you can touch someone else to mean exactly what you need to say, all without saying jack shit. It’s a catalogue in the series of Subtle Body Language that every Strider has written down in the deep recesses of his mind, because there wasn’t much talk around the Strider residence growing up. But that sure as fuck doesn’t mean there wasn’t communication.

There wasn’t a lot of touchy feely crap either, actually there was a lot less touchy feely crap than there was talking, but that just meant that most of his hug catalogue was filled by people other than his bro.

And it was time to add a new entry. Alright what’s on the menu today. Here we have a hug that says quite a multitude of things: _you’re my bro, your home is still with me, stay as long as you fucking need to, I’m sorry the me in your timeline fucked shit up so bad that you’re even in this life or death situation you’ve clearly got going on, two Daves is no damn trouble are you fucking kidding me, I’ll always be here if you need me._

There may have been tears in Dave’s eyes. And on his cheeks. And they may have been soaking into Bro’s white polo a bit. Also maybe there may have been some snot. He clutched to Bro like he hadn’t seen him in years, like the last time he saw him it was dead on the ground, like he’d spent the last few years knowing in his soul that it didn’t matter how similar Dirk was because he wasn’t _Bro_ and he never would be. He made little strangled noises into Bro’s shoulder he would deny ever making, partially because they were uncool as fuck but also because they came from the part of him that straight up wanted to abandon his friends back in his own timeline just so he could stay here forever with stillalive!Bro. And that was treason thinking right there. What kind of knight was he? Pathetic. He was pathetic as fuck.

Bro stroked his hair like he hadn’t since he was like fucking _six_ and they still hadn’t said a damn thing. Then he laid his little bro down and left.

 

Everyone left him alone while he slept. Which was sort of becoming a problem because there wasn’t really all that much sleeping happening. Sure, he’d go in and out of consciousness, dozing for a few hours, but something cold and final had taken hold of his insides and kept his mind flickering with panicked thoughts.

What if he couldn’t get back.

What if he’d let everyone down.

What if everyone was dead.

What if he was a doomed Dave and he was going to die.

What if he was stuck here.

Well. That might not be so bad, all things considered. But it’d be nice to know if he was stuck stuck or just stuck for lack of trying stuck. Like it’d be a real bummer just to assume he was stuck stuck when he wasn’t really stuck at all he just never put in any actual effort into getting back to his own timeline, and then somehow found out, and then felt like the worst friend in the history of super sucky friends because he literally just hadn’t given enough of a shit about his friends to even make an attempt to get back to them.

But in the meantime he was really in no condition to do any fighting, so he was much better off not worrying about shit and just chilling. So he did, finally, eventually, manage to get some sleep.

What snapped him back into the waking world was, much to his complete lack of surprise, Karkat fucking Vantas. As per fucking usual. Had he ever even left the meteor?

“JOHN, THAT IS THE STUPIDES THING I HAVE EVER HEARD.”

There was some murmuring that sounded a lot like John trying to get Karkat to use his indoor voice.

“NO, JOHN, I DON’T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND. THE SHEER AMOUNT OF STUPID REQUIRED FOR THIS CLAIM OF YOURS TO EVEN REMOTELY APPROACH THE BAR FOR THINGS THAT CAN ACTUALLY HAPPEN HERE IN THE REAL WORLD SETS OFF MY BULLSHIT-O-METER LIKE NOBODY’S FUCKING BUSINESS. PRANK DE-FUCKING-RAILED.”

There was a pause.

“SORRY MISTER EGBERT.”

There was some murmuring that sounded a lot like his own voice saying something witty and sarcastic.

“OF COURSE YOU’RE IN ON THIS, STRIDER. EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT YOU’D DO JUST FOR—“

Dave opened the door and counted heads. “You tryin’ to wake the dead out here, Vantas? ‘Cause I think there are some old corpses in the Himalayas that can’t hear you.”

And Karkat fucking Vantas, much to Dave’s ultimate amusement, was speechless. His jaw actually slacked a little as he gave Dave a look-over so blatant it made his other self snort.

Dave nodded to himself. “Sup.”

Other Dave nodded back, face like stone. “Sup.”

John fucking _giggled._

Dave took this opportunity to start a list of things that were different. Just so he could keep shit straight. His other self didn’t look like he was going to be on that list at all: it was like looking in a mirror. Same haircut, same shades, same stoic lack of expression, same taste in clothes. Maybe his could raid his alternate timeline self’s closet.

Then John. Not much different there either. Same uncombed hair stuck up at the same goofy angles. Same dorky glasses. His teeth had apparently been wrestled into braces at some point, because they actually fit inside his mouth now, but he still had the same cockeyed smile. _His_ John had really filled out from swinging around that hammer, and while this one had the same broadness in his shoulders, Dave could see where he lacked in muscle. He was more lanky than beefy, like his John. Same obsession with Ghostbusters though, judging by his shirt.

But Karkat. Dave’s face actually broke its practiced cool so it could slightly furrow its brows in confusion. This Karkat was human. His skin was a light golden brown instead of gray, there were no horns poking out of a thankfully familiar mess of hair that was dark brown instead of black; his eyes were brown, and in the place of what Dave had come to see as his usual gray sweater, he had on a t-shirt. When he opened his mouth next, Dave saw normal, human, blunt incisors instead of his Karkat’s maw of pointy death teeth.

“OH MY GOD.”

“Fucking told you, Vantas,” other Dave said.

“Language, David!” Dadbert called from the living room.

“Sorry Mister Egbert.”

Dave realized that he legitimately hadn’t thought that this could be a thing. Ever. In no dream bubble ever had he encountered the trolls as anything but trolls. He had actually assumed that being on planet Earth again meant he wouldn’t see any trolls at all. About five minutes ago that had still seemed like a reasonable assumption. But here was the universe, yet again, taking that assumption and chucking it clean out to space. Not even gravity or the Earth’s atmosphere could slow that fucker down.

Which begged the question: if dream bubbles covered all of the alternate timelines, and nothing like this had ever been in a dream bubble, then where the fuck _was_ he?

“John I swear to god—“ So Karkat _did_ have an indoor voice, interesting— “if this is a prank—“

“I’m real, Karkles.” Dave’s stomach was begging him for food, and his arm was whining for painkillers. That was probably a good sign. He moved out of the doorway and into the hallway. “I bleed red and everything. You’ll even get to see when I change my bandage. No pranking today.” He shouldered his way between his other self and John, and then finally Karkat. They all just sort of watched him, like they still couldn’t believe he was there.

Dave couldn’t believe he was still standing. Looks like apple juice and sleep really do cure all—oh shit his inner monologue spoke too soon. His legs decided halfway down the hall that he was too heavy, so he pitched into the wall with a very ungraceful _thump_ and slid serenely to the floor.

“Dave!” John called out, but somehow Dadbert was there first, hauling Dave back to his feet for the second time today. Dave really hoped this didn’t become a thing with them.

“You shouldn’t be up, David.”

Dave didn’t respond as he was walked to the kitchen table and sat down. Again. Other him and John and Karkat followed him in, looking a bit like strangers in their own house.

“Well my stomach started asking for food, and my arm would kinda like some painkillers, and I figured they just go together so well I might as well make a thing of it and eat at the table like everyone else. You guys still eat at tables, right? That’s still a thing?”


	2. Hold on, back up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is me not doing homework LOOK HOW MUCH I WROTE SWEET JESUS

Dave’s late afternoon meal became an early dinner for everyone else. Which was probably for the best, so everyone had something better to do than sit and stare at him while he ate. He’d never had issues eating in front of people before, but he’d also never before been able to say he knew what it felt like to be an animal at the zoo.

So instead they sat and pretended not to stare at him while they ate. Which meant that dinner was rather tense.

Dadbert sat at one end, and Bro sat at the other—the two ends of the table. It was actually kind of cute, but Dave swallowed that comment down fast. He’d only been allowed Advil, so he couldn’t blame it on the drugs. So, bloodloss then. He wondered how long he’d get to use that one before someone decided it was shock or something. He was sort of dreading the moment Rose would show up to pick him apart. That wasn’t going to be pleasant—for either of them, this time.

“So,” John finally broke the silence, giving Dave his best goofy grin. “Dad said you were like, alternate dimension Dave or something? That’s really cool!”

Dave stopped his fork halfway to his mouth. Suddenly his appetite was gone, but he couldn’t place what it was about John’s comment that sounded so chillingly _fuck no._

“Alternate timeline, or universe maybe, I’m not sure. But dimensions are different.” What the fuck did he care anyway, none of that bullshit had ever made any real sense to him. It just _was,_ and he’d just gone with it.

“So there were different versions of us there?”

“Sure.”

“Was I different?”

“No. You were still you. Far as I can tell, everyone was the same. ‘Cept Karkat.”

Karkat rolled his eyes. “Figures I’d be the only person you’d single out, Strider. What was I, an alien? I bet I wasn’t even human in your little world.”

Dave struggled not to smile and failed miserably. It _had_ to be a lucky guess. “Yeah, actually. You were a troll.”

Other Dave made a noise into his food that sounded a lot like stifled laughter. “Boy have you got _him_ pegged.”

Karkat’s face at this moment could have been entered under the dictionary definition for “enraged” as he reached for some words he was allowed to say in Dadbert’s presence, but his face froze when Dave added, “But you weren’t the only one.”

“What do you mean, I wasn’t the only one? You _just_ said—”

“Um, you guys know anyone called Terezi or Kanaya?”

John piped up again. “Yeah! Dave’s dating Terezi, and Rose and Kanaya are girlfriends!”

“You mean like together romantically girlfriends, right?”

John’s smile faded a little. “Um, yeah. That’s—that’s okay, right?”

Dave smiled and stabbed at his food again. “Hell yes. Some things never change.” Dadbert caught his eye but chose to let his language pass. Seemed he was very used to Strider slippage. Dave wondered how he managed to have a civil relationship with Bro.

John’s smile was now back on full brightness.

“Hold up, we need to get back to aliens. Terezi and Kanaya were trolls too?” Karkat butted back in. “I just want to make sure I have all the insanity coming out of your mouth straight before I discard it entirely as stupid and not worth my time to think about.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m probably going to regret asking this but _troll?”_

A smile tugged at the corner of Dave’s mouth. “It was a species. Like humans, only with gray skin, pointy teeth, and horns.”

“Horns?” John asked, excited.

Karkat shot John a withering look. “This is even stupider than I thought you were capable of, Strider. Congratulations, you’ve lowered the bar deep below sea level, a feat I didn’t know was possible. Leave me to bask in the glow of your stupid while you continue this poorly-written tale of woe.”

“Yours were tiny, Karkles.” Dave lifted both hands to his head, trying to make his index fingers into approximations of what Karkat’s horns had looked like. “Little nubby things. They were cute. Terezi’s were a little bigger, and pointy. Sharp too, actually. Kanaya’s were longer, and one of them had this cool hook thing going on, but I think it made pulling clothes over her head kinda difficult.”

“What about Jade and Rose!” John said.

“Human. Uh, sort of. Rose was. Jade started out human, but got crossed with her dog along the way. She had dog ears and chased cats and everything.”

John for some stupid reason had chosen that moment to take a drink of his beverage. Now he was giggling into it, inadvertently blowing bubbles in his water. When he finally figured out he should probably get his face out of the glass, he’d already dribbled water down his chin and into his food. He wiped his face on his sleeve, but his silly smile didn’t come off with the water. “Oh my god, I can see it.” He looked at other Dave for his opinion, and noticed that everyone had stopped eating to look at him. “What?”

As if on cue, forks clattered against plates and everyone was eating again. “Jade might be part dog _now_ , you never know,” other Dave said before shoving more food in his mouth.

Dave noted that other him didn’t look at John again for the whole meal. Something nagged at the back of his mind, but fluttered away when he poked it. He was missing something here. Some piece to this puzzle. The game had never happened here, but something was definitely up. He just hoped that whatever it was, it wasn’t wearing clown makeup.

It was like being in a mirror world. Everything was the same except different. These people were his friends and family, and yet they weren’t. They knew Dave, but they didn’t know _him_. It was a relief to see them alive and well and _happy_ , but it was going to be depressing as fuck if he was the only one feeling like a battered war veteran. Actually, no, that was way too accurate. He _was_ a war veteran. They had called it a game, and maybe it had all the mechanics of a game, but they had _died_. You weren’t supposed to die in games. Not for real.

“So, Dave.”

Both Daves’ heads shot up, but Bro was only looking at him.

“That’s going to get annoying real fast,” other Dave muttered.

“Yeah?” Dave said.

Bro was done eating. He steepled his fingers over his plate and placed his chin on them. Ironically, of course. “What was happening before you ended up here?”

Oh yes, the big question. Not the biggest question, because the biggest question was _what am I going to do if I can’t get back?_ But this was also something he didn’t want to think about. At all. “Don’t know. Memory’s kinda fuzzy.”

“What’s the last thing you _do_ remember?”

Bro was being patient with him. Dave could only guess at why. He also didn’t know why he’d let Dave cry into his shoulder like a child just hours ago, but that was a great big gift horse he wasn’t about to look in the mouth. He swallowed, tentatively dragging his mind back to where the memories were. The ones he had labeled in some state of semi-consciousness _do not touch_. He had to touch them eventually, and Bro was asking now. He swallowed. “Fighting, mostly. It was kind of a blur. I remember my arm getting hurt. Reality was also being broken up at the time though. Objects kept falling through the cracks, just _zap_ and they were gone. I might have fallen in one.”

“But you don’t remember.”

Dadbert was up and clearing plates now. He had to tap John on the shoulder to get him to do the same. Karkat got up to help, too. But they were all still listening.

“Nope.”

“How about all the,” there was a pause, “ _stuff_ you left in your crater.”

“Wait, what stuff?”

John piped up again from the sink. “Don’t worry alternate dimension Dave, we brought it all in for you. It’s in the living room on the table.”

What stuff? Like, all the other things that had fallen through the cracks? Had it all ended up here?

Suddenly, Dave realized he couldn’t feel his captchalogue. It was usually right there, just hovering at the edge of his mind. But not now. Not even his strife specibus. Shit, he felt _naked_. “Mind if I take a look?” He got to his feet and hesitated with his hands on the table. How badly did he want everyone to see him fall over again, really?

But suddenly Bro was there, had him by the arm, gave him something to lean on. Part of him wanted to be ashamed. Most of him took the help gladly, like the hug. Neither of them said anything as they walked to the living room.

Lo and behold, there was all of his crap, strewn out over the table in front of the couch. Everything he’d had captchalogued in his deck when he’d crossed over. While he hadn’t taken to captchaloguing chairs like Karkat, he’d always been one to carry around a lot of useless shit. It was like he was a girl whose purse had just been dumped out all over the table for everyone to see, except no one in the house full of males was recoiling from boxes of tampons. Because there weren’t any. Duh.

“Yep, that’s all mine.”

“Might not all fit in the crawlspace with you.”

There was a pause. “You sure you’re cool with me staying with you?” Dave asked quietly.

Bro snorted and ruffled Dave’s hair, but didn’t respond.

It had been a stupid question anyway.

When the doorbell rang, John was the first to the door, Dadbert hot on his heels. John swung the door open with one of his biggest goofy smiles plastered to his face, revealing Rose and Rose’s mom on the welcome mat. “You will never guess what happened today!” John said.

“John,” Dadbert warned, but he couldn’t seem to think of anything to actually warn his son not to do this time.

Rose raised a single eyebrow and stepped into the house. She locked eyes with you. “Did Dave do something stupid again, John, or is his new injury the result of another of your ill-fated pranks?”

John’s grin just got wider.

Other Dave stepped into the living room from the kitchen.

Rose’s gaze flickered between the two of you, and the calm on her face was Bro-level.

Dave wondered if they were related in this universe, what with no paradox clones and all.

“A Dave from an alternate timeline just dropped in! There’s a crater in the backyard and everything! Go talk to him, it really is Dave!” John closed the door behind Rose’s mom, who _cackled_.

Back to being a zoo animal, then. Wonderful. Bro left him to deal with Rose on his own, the bastard. So he sat down on the couch and started going through his crap. There was a bunch of it he could probably just throw away.

He felt Rose sit down next to him. John took a chair. Other Dave didn’t sit at all, but leaned with crossed arms on John’s chair.

He felt Rose’s eyes on him, but didn’t look up from sorting.

“Alternate timeline, huh?” she asked softly.

“Something like that,” he answered.

“Yeah!” John said. “We played a game or…something.” He cocked his head to the side. “Karkat and Terezi and Kanaya were aliens I guess, and Jade was part dog.”

“Sounds like a dream,” Rose commented.

Dave snorted. “I wish.”

“So what happened?” John squirmed in the chair. “I mean, how did you end up here?”

Dave shrugged. “Can’t remember.”

“All of this must seem strange to you,” Rose offered.

“Not really. I figure this here is what things’d have been like if we’d never played the game. Or after, maybe, since the trolls are human now. ‘Cept no one remembers.”

“Trolls?”

Dave nodded to John. “Aliens.”

“What did they look like, if they weren’t human?”

How many times was he going to have to go through this? “Gray skin, pointy teeth, horns. Honestly, they didn’t look that different. The hardest part was the different cultures. You wanted to have a conversation, you had to explain every few words. Like, they didn’t have brains, they had _think pans_.”

“WHAT THE HELL IS A THINK PAN,” yelled Karkat from the kitchen.

Dave laughed. He laughed harder than he intended to, harder than he had in months. Years, maybe. He threw back his head and _laughed_. Karkat Vantas, the only troll who constantly criticized the human words for everything, the kid who seemed more intent on teaching Dave about troll culture than he was about learning human culture, who had ardently relied on his trollian vocabulary in the face of the fact that Alternia was gone forever— _Karkat Vantas_ was asking Dave what a think pan was.

Nobody else was laughing. Nobody else thought it was funny that Karkat was basically asking what a brain was. But he didn’t bother to explain the joke—and he knew he wouldn’t be able to poke fun at Karkat later either. Because it wasn’t _his_ Karkat.

The laughter slowly faded into breathless wheezing and Rose put a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry,” he said, still smiling. “That was just the funniest thing ever. Karkat asking what a brain is. Ironic, even.” He snorted, his smile becoming less happy and more melancholy.

“Oh,” John said, his worried frown becoming a tentative smile. “I guess that is pretty funny.”

“What’s funny?” Karkat was standing directly behind him now. Dave leaned back and craned his head up so he could see Karkat glaring down at him.

“You.” Dave wiggled his eyebrows.

Karkat stuck out his tongue. It was pink. Will you look at that.

Karkat shifted under Dave’s stare. “What?”

Dave shrugged. “Not used to human you. I sorta always wondered, but never thought I’d get to see.”

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Karkat sneered.

“Can I? It’d be the perfect souvenir.”

Karkat rolled his eyes, but didn’t respond.

“Do you know if you can get back?” Rose asked.

Dave brought his head back down and turned to look at Rose. She was exactly like his Rose down to the last hair on her head and the twinkle in her eye. And 100% sober. So he told it to her straight: “No.”

“So you may be stuck here.”

“Yeah.”

“I see.”

“Great.”

“Just what we need, _two_ of you dorks running around. One _clearly_ wasn’t enough,” Karkat droned.

“I know, isn’t it great?” John said, his eyes bright. “But, uh, isn’t it going to be a little confusing? Two Daves? I mean, telling you guys apart is going to be hard.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, John.” Something twisted in his gut, and this time he knew what it was. He remembered when his future self jumped into his kernelsprite and became Davesprite. He knew Davesprite had had a hard time not being alpha Dave anymore, but he was slowly realizing there had been a lot more to it than that, things he had chosen to ignore at the time. Davesprite had launched himself into the past to save John, his best friend, and then John had insisted on his not being the real Dave. He had been _other_ Dave. Dave _sprite_. And Davesprite, with both a new name and a new body, had been stuck on that golden ship for three years with the one person who didn’t want to consider him a person, his best friend. It was no wonder he’d gotten off that ship with the biggest inferiority complex Dave had ever seen. It wasn’t just an identity crisis—it was John being a huge dick to him for three years.

Dave suddenly felt nauseous. That was going to happen to _him_ if he stayed here. That is, if he wasn’t doomed to die.

 

They kept him up into the night asking questions about the game. About the things that had happened along the way, about their powers. About the trolls. Dave tried to stay away from the more depressing parts, but somehow those were the parts Rose wanted to know about the most. Which didn’t surprise him. So he casually strolled through the valley of death that was his recollection of events. He’d say things like, “And then it just became a Dead Dave party, so I figured that one was a lost cause, and I left,” and “I had a few doomed Daves come through for me there though, so that one turned out okay.” He summed up the mission to destroy/create the green sun in a single sentence: “I even got blown up once but it was okay because I got some grade A powers out of the deal.” Whenever the story got particularly hairy he’d tell it in metaphors that quickly got away from him, as they tended to do when he desperately wanted to avoid the subject. Rose and other him saw right through those, but he didn’t care as long as they didn’t ask any more questions along that vein.

They didn’t. Other him was a real trooper and didn’t ask any sensitive questions at all. Rose though. He knew from the look in her eye that she’d corner him alone later.

Sometime during the evening Bro brought him a bag to carry his shit in. Some of it wouldn’t fit, like his shitty sword, but most of it did. Dadbert came and asked if he wanted to keep the rest, and he said no, so the older man took it away.

When John started yawning, that was when Dadbert decided it was time for bed. The Striders and Lalondes left together, and parted in the street. They all lived literally down the street from each other. How convenient was that.

Their sunglasses-at-night party of three entered their house without a word. Bro closed and locked the door behind them. Other Dave turned on the lights.

Dave almost missed his old apartment in Texas, but didn’t say so. It had been shitty, honestly, and this was definitely a step up. It was just the nostalgia he was missing, and he knew it.

This was a small three-bedroom house, just a single story with a basement. The third bedroom was currently being used though, and Dave didn’t ask for what. He knew what Bro did for a living, he could guess.

“We can clean it out for you tomorrow,” Bro said.

“Woah, what do you mean ‘we?’ I’m not going in there,” other him said and disappeared into his own room.

Bro looked at Dave.

Dave shrugged. “I’ll wear gloves.”

They made a bed for him on the couch. Since when did they have extra sheets just chilling in the closet? But apparently things had changed for them in the past few years. Or Bro had changed into someone a little more—

Responsible wasn’t the right word. He’d always been responsible. Having a linen closet wasn’t responsible, it was…respectable? Just plain _nice?_ Maybe it was being around Mr. Egbert that had done it.

He still couldn’t see Bro deciding to leave Texas though. And everybody all deciding to move to Washington was straight up trippy. But in a weird way, it kind of made sense. Sburb wasn’t here to bring them all together, so he was glad that _something_ was. And he was doubly glad it wasn’t something that also wanted to kill them.

“Need anything else?” Bro asked.

Dave sat down on the couch and looked at Bro.

Bro didn’t move.

Silence stretched between them, but it was comfortable rather than expectant. And it wasn’t empty. They just looked at each other. Took each other in. Wondered whether this time, they might need words.

“What happened to me on your side of the void?” Bro asked softly.

He knew what the answer was, Dave realized. Bro _knew_. “You died.”

“How?”

“Run through with your own sword.”

Bro nodded. He was silent for a few more heartbeats before he asked in that same quiet tone, “Did you make it out okay?”

Dave shrugged, gestured to his hurt arm, to all of him. “Still alive.”

Bro didn’t move, didn’t say a word. But Dave could see the cogs turning in his head. So he waited.

Finally, Bro reached out and put his hand on Dave’s shoulder. Then he turned and retreated into his room.

 

Dave didn’t sleep well that night. He woke up several times gasping and sweating, but could not for the life of him remember what he had dreamt. Most of him didn’t want to. At dawn he finally gave up and found some apple juice in the kitchen. He sat at the table and took turns sipping his drink and resting his forehead on the cool table.

The chair next to him slid out and he heard someone sit down. He looked up and saw other him pouring himself a glass of apple juice from the jug.

“You’re up early,” he observed. Then he put his face back down on the table.

“So’re you.”

“Can’t help it I’m a morning person.”

Other Dave snorted. “No you’re not.”

“Then what’re you doing up?” Dave breathed into the table and waited for a response.

“Wanna talk?”

“’Bout what?”

There was a pause. Dave was pretty sure his other self had shrugged. “You said a lot of things last night about us being the same.”

“Yeah.”

There was another pause. Dave finally brought his head up and took another sip of apple juice.

“I just. Okay so this is probably a really invasive question—”

“We’re the same goddamned person, just spit it out.”

“You and Terezi.”

Dave took another sip. Pointedly didn’t look at himself. “We dated for a bit when we were stuck on that meteor. I broke up with her. I got over her.”

“So…. Because she was going to spend the week here, and I just—this is an okay thing, right? It’s not going to be awkward?”

Dave smiled into his juice. “’Course not. I won’t get in your way, cross my heart and hope to die a permanent death. She’s all yours.”

“Okay. Cool.”

Dave did not feel the tension leave. He sighed. “What else?”

Other him didn’t answer for a while. Dave could tell he didn’t want to at all. He finished his glass of juice and poured himself another while he waited. Fuck if he couldn’t out-wait himself.

Finally, other him breathed out a single word. “John.”

Something twisted in his gut and an image of blue and red flashed across his vision. “Yeah?”

Other him gripped his glass with white knuckles and scrubbed at his hair with his other hand. His face was a clear picture of _I really don’t want to talk about this._

“Look,” Dave said, running a finger along the rim of his glass. “He just—he can be a bit insensitive sometimes. He’s an idiot and he doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time. Words just bubble out of his mouth like word vomit. I know I’m just ‘Other Dave’ to him and I—it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s not—” Other him quickly glanced from Dave and back to the table. Then he let out a shaky sigh. “I just wanted to know if you’re crushing on him as hard as I am.”

Dave stopped. “Wait, what?”

“That a no?”

“I thought—you _just said_ —what about Terezi?”

Other him at least had the decency to look guilty. “She…she knows, it’s hard to actually keep things from her, but I guess you uh, you know all about that. I mean, I love her, I do, and I wouldn’t—I don’t—”

“You’re really fucked up, Dave.”

Other him swallowed. “I know.”

They let the silence take over for a few minutes.

“No. No, I don’t and never have liked John. Not like that. He’s my best bro and that’s it.”

Other him nodded. Chewed his lip. And that’s when Dave got it. “He’s straight, isn’t he?”

“Is he not, where you—”

“No, he is. At least as far as I know. Told Karkat once that he was ‘not a homosexual’ when he was going all kismespades on the poor kid.”

“What?”

Dave shrugged. “Nothing. Why do _you_ like him?”

Other him looked deep into his apple juice like it held all the answers. And shrugged.

Dave breathed through his teeth. “So what happened there?”

“Didn’t like me back. It was a while ago, we’re over it.”

“Right.”

Dave greeted the awkward silence like an old friend. Like him and the awkward silence exchange Christmas cards every year.

“Are you straight?” Other Dave asked, still staring into his glass.

Dave buried his face in the table again and sighed _hard_. “I don’t even know anymore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well I was with Terezi, right?”

“Yeah.”

_“Troll_ Terezi.”

“…yeah…”

Dave hesitated. “Yeah well, trolls all had the same junk, and they all had _tentadicks.”_

Silence.

“…did you like it?”

Dave snorted. “Never got that far. She just told me to see the look on my face. It was true though, I double checked with Karkat.”

Other him let out a short laugh. “Karkat. What is _up_ with that kid.”

Dave sighed and sat up again. “He live on this street too?”

“Yeah, right next door to the Egberts.”

“Terezi?”

“No, across town.”

“Kanaya?”

“Canada.”

Dave made a face, for once not caring about staying cool. “ _Canada?_ Everybody all ends up on the same street except Kanaya who gets dropped in _Canada?”_

“Rose met her over the internet. She writes some sort of wizard fanfiction and Kanaya was one of her readers, and then her beta reader, and then her editor, and now they collaborate. She’s flown in to visit a few times.”

Dave rubbed his temples. “Okay, who else have you got hanging around?”

“Who else fought monsters with you?”

“…the mayor of can town.”

“What?”

Dave pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “He was a construct of the game, not a player. I don’t think he can exist outside. I’ll miss him though, he was the best.”

“…I’m sorry.”

Dave shrugged. “Whatever. He’s probably in can heaven. I didn’t really know anyone else that well. They were either dead by the time we got to the meteor or they just chilled in dream bubbles. Anyway, do you guys go to school here in the real world?”

“Yeah. Me’n John and Rose all went together this year. Jade exchange studented for a few weeks when she visited. We keep trying to get her to move out here permanently.”

“How’s that going?”

“Well she’s visiting more. She’s due in today, actually.”

“Jade _and_ Terezi, wow. Gonna be quite a party. What day is it?”

“Sunday. Yesterday was Saturday.”

“School tomorrow?”

“Friday was the last. It’s June, you know. We’re on summer vacation now.”

“Well that makes this shit easier. I got the whole summer to figure my shit out.”

“What, is the start of school like the end of the line for you?”

“No, I just know you people are gonna try to make me go with you. Get me enrolled and send me off.”

“You haven’t been to school in _years_ , have you?”

“Nope.”

“Guess that means you’d be a couple grades behind the rest of us then.”

Dave grinned and looked up. “Well let’s see. Last time I went to school, I was finishing up seventh grade.”

Other Dave smirked right back. “We just finished sophomore year of high school.”

“Alright, so what do you really learn in three years?”

“Algebra.”

“Fuck algebra.”

“Geometry.”

“Fuck that, I know shapes and shit.”

“Biology and chemistry.”

“Who even needs science.”

“History.”

Dave rolled his eyes. “It’s all fucking temporary anyway, _fuck_. I saw a version of the earth where we had gigolos for presidents and Betty Crocker was our evil overlord. _Betty Crocker was evil_. Seriously, fuck history.”

Other Dave laughed. “Okay, you win that one. But they make you start taking a language, too.”

“What are you guys taking?”

“Rose talked me and John into French.”

“She _would_. Okay you got me there, I’d have to start in French 101. Actually, what all do they offer?”

“French, Spanish, Latin.”

“It’s all fucking romantic. Whatever. Okay, what else?”

“English. That’s it.”

“See, I didn’t miss much.”

Other Dave shook his head. “Well if you really are stuck here, I guess we’ll figure it out. It’ll be weird having two identical kids named Dave walking around though.”

Dave downed the rest of his apple juice and got up to put the jug back in the fridge. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. If we get to it. For now, the last thing I need is an identity crisis.”

“Sure. We can be like Fred and George Weasley. Take John and his trickster’s gambit down a few pegs, show him how it’s _really_ done. Tag team him till he _drops_.”

Dave smiled. “ _That_ sounds like fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so as you can see I super love fleshing out relationships between people because I think that's the coolest thing ever. Like I said slow buildup. Like really slow. Yay.


End file.
